Thursday, May 10, 2012

YELLOW EYED PENGUINS

New Zealand’s Fiordland has some wonderful locations. I took
a boat excursion to Doubtful Sound. It was a day of heavy rain but that did not
seem to upset a small group of Yellow Eyed Penguins that I was able to
photograph with a 400mm lens from the boat.

I’m planning to make a series of studies from the photographs
to compose a painting. This is a page I did yesterday.

11th May
2012

On this second page I thought for a moment I had a ready-madecomposition because of the way the sketches
were distributed quite accidentally.

But then the attitudes of the birds were so
similar I began to think that they were taken from frames of the same bird.
Does that matter? I don’t think it does really the same bird preening strikes quite
a different attitude to when it is at rest. So I’ll look further at my reference
material to see what other poses I’ve collected.

About Me

M.Sc. (Math Ed), Open University (BA) , I learned to paint at Walsall and Stafford Schools of Art.
My current painterly interest is wildlife. I work from plein air drawings and my own photographs.
I try to give equal weight to the animal’s environment as well as it’s behaviour.
I studied for three years at the Walsall and Stafford Schools of Art at a time when art students spent at least two days and one evening in the life class.
The rigorous discipline of close observation and drawing developed in the life class was one of the benefits which has lasted.
My creative output mirrors the things I care about, draws on my experiences, and generally tries to interpret what the eye likes.
For me art also embraces a tradition of sound craftsmanship–I'm driven by a desire to make well crafted artefacts that will give lasting pleasure.
I later took an interest in mathematics and was awarded a Masters Degree by Loughborough University